Robotic Process Automation is a huge trend with businesses across the world. By combining artificial intelligence with other technologies, organisations are automating routine, repetitive businesses processes to improve efficiency and drive better results. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, RPA can already reduce operations costs as much as 65 per cent , with ROI within as little as half a year.

SwissCognitiveRobotic Process Automation is a huge trend with businesses across the world. By combining artificial intelligence with other technologies, organisations are automating routine, repetitive businesses processes to improve efficiency and drive better results. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, RPA can already reduce operations costs as much as 65 per cent , with ROI within as little as half a year.

Everyone can automate

Every business has processes that can be automated from start to finish by an unattended robot, working without intervention, 24/7, without errors, collecting and executing tasks from a queue. But what about the business processes that have decision points requiring human intervention or communication skills? This is where attended desktop automation comes into play. Attended desktop automation allows a dedicated, smart desktop robot to help a human with certain tasks. This robot can mimic human actions, from copying and pasting information, to data inputting and even opening up applications and performing actions. It can even exceed what a human could achieve on their own, by gathering and analysing large amounts of data 100% accurately and rapidly in real-time and taking actions based on the results. All of these activities can occur on an employee’s desktop, in the background, triggered by any type of event, such as a button click, switching tabs, checking a field has specific data or even a complex combination of multiple events.

Collaboration not Replacement

Recent improvements in algorithmic techniques and the expansion in the use of deep neural networks have also enabled significant improvements in the technology’s ability to deliver value. In the contact centre industry, for example, where agents often have to juggle multiple tasks, (talking to customers, sourcing information, inputting data etc), attended automation certainly lightens the load. It allows those agents to focus on talking to a customer whilst tasks like looking for relevant data in multiple applications or figuring out what the best next step to take is, are done for them in real-time. With this approach, the human and the desktop robot are working side by side, in full collaboration, with humans overseeing the execution of each activity. Humans can then focus on more interesting, valuable work, while also being empowered to make the best decisions in real-time. […]